Mitsui-led consortium wins Western DFC contracts in India

Related Articles

The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) has awarded two contracts worth JPY76bn ($620m) to Japan’s Mitsui-led consortium to carry out civil and track works for two sections of Phase II of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) between Delhi and Mumbai.

The contracts will cover the 186km Vaitarana-Sachin and 134km Sachin-Vadodara sections of the future 1,483km freight corridor.

The DFC project will eventually connect the four cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata at the corners of India’s Golden Quadrilateral.

The Mitsui-led consortium includes Ircon International, a company under the Ministry of Railways, the Indian Government, and Tata Projects (TPL), an infrastructure development company in the Tata Group.

The project will see Ircon and TPL jointly carry out civil engineering work and lay tracks using high-quality, Japanese-made rails.

Works are being carried out to meet increasing rail freight demand resulting from India’s rapid economic growth in recent years.

The scope of work under the project will include mechanised track laying using new track construction (NTC) machines which have been used on other DFC projects, as well as lay about 2km of 260m-long, head-hardened rails a day, and non-traction electrification works.

The Western DFC is expected to reduce freight transport times between Delhi and Mumbai from three days to less than one day, supporting the Indian and Japanese Governments’ Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DIMC) development initiative.

Construction work is expected to be initiated in September and may take four years for completion.